Married to My Father's Killer

Chapter 3

My house. My bed.

The words sat in the air between us like a loaded gun.

I should have thrown the pen down. Three years of grief and rage screamed at me to stand up, walk out, and never let a Sinclair own a single inch of me.

But my mother was dying twelve blocks away, and this man had the power to save her with a phone call. He knew it. He was watching me realize it all over again, those grey eyes patient and merciless.

"You're enjoying this," I said.

"No." He straightened, unbothered. "I'm being honest. A marriage that looks fake protects no one. My enemies look for cracks. I don't intend to give them any."

"And if I refuse that term?"

"Then there's no contract, your mother loses her bed tonight, and you go back to scrubbing other people's floors with your father's name buried where it belongs." He said it without cruelty, which somehow made it worse. "I'm not a romantic, Miss Hart. I'm offering you a transaction. Take it or don't."

I stared at the contract. At his name beside the empty line where mine should go.

Then I lifted my eyes to his and let him see that I wasn't afraid.

"I have a term of my own," I said.

That stopped him. People didn't negotiate with Adrian Sinclair. I could see the calculation flicker behind his face.

"Go on."

"You can have the world believe whatever you want. I'll share your house. I'll wear your name. I'll smile for every camera you put in front of me." I set the pen down with deliberate care. "But you don't touch me unless I say you can. Ever. That's not a term I'm willing to discuss."

For a long moment he just looked at me.

Then, slowly, the ghost of that almost-smile returned. "Most women would worry I'd never want to."

"I'm not most women."

"No," he agreed, and something shifted in his voice — quieter, more curious, like he'd found a piece in a game he hadn't expected. "You're not."

He extended his hand. "Agreed. You have my word, for whatever you think it's worth."

I didn't shake it. I picked up the pen instead and signed my name — Lucia Hart — in clean, unflinching letters, sealing away two years of my life and the only soul I had left to sell.

The moment the ink dried, he pulled out his phone, said three words to whoever answered, and ended the call.

"It's done," he said. "Your mother's transfer to the private wing begins within the hour. The best specialists in the country. You can stop holding your breath."

And just like that, the thing I had begged for, wept for, ruined myself for — done in the space between heartbeats, like it was nothing.

I had to look away so he wouldn't see what it did to me.

He came around the desk. I felt him before I saw him, the warmth of him at my shoulder, close enough that I caught the clean dark scent of him. From his pocket he drew a ring — a single stone, cold and bright and obscenely large.

"Give me your hand."

"I can put it on myself."

"It needs to look like I gave it to you. Because in two hours, I will have." His patience was thinner now. "Your hand, Lucia."

It was the first time he'd used my name. I hated how it sounded in his mouth — low, certain, like he already owned the word.

I gave him my hand.

He slid the ring on slowly, his fingers warm against mine, and the contact sent something traitorous and electric up my arm that I refused to name. When it was seated, he didn't let go right away. He turned my hand over, studied it, and for one strange breath I thought he might say something real.

"You have an architect's hands," he murmured. "Calluses on the right fingers. Old graphite stains you can't quite scrub out."

My heart stopped.

My father's hands. The hands he'd taught me to draw with, the only inheritance the world hadn't been able to take.

"I worked in design," I said carefully. "Before."

"Before what?"

Before your family destroyed mine.

"Before things changed," I said.

He held my gaze a moment longer, and I had the unsettling sense that this man missed nothing — that one careless word could unravel everything I'd come here to do.

I pulled my hand back. The ring felt like a shackle and a key all at once.

Let them welcome me into their gilded house, I thought, as the cold settled clean and clear inside me. Let them dress me up and parade me. Let them never once suspect that the woman smiling at their dinner table came to burn them down from the inside.

I was a Sinclair now, in the eyes of the world.

And I would use every day of it to bury them.

"There's a dinner," Adrian said, turning back to his desk as if the last minute hadn't happened. "Tonight. My family expects to meet the woman I'm marrying."

My blood ran cold. "Tonight?"

"You wanted this fast. This is fast." He didn't look up. "Wear something they can't sneer at. They'll be looking for a reason to."

Before I could answer, the office door opened without a knock.

A woman swept in — all dark silk and red lips and the kind of beauty that knew exactly what it was worth. She crossed the room like she'd done it a thousand times, slid a manicured hand across Adrian's shoulder, and pressed a kiss to his jaw.

Then she saw me.

Her eyes raked down my cheap coat, my borrowed shoes, the ring on my finger — and stopped there, going flat and sharp as a blade.

"Adrian, darling," she said sweetly, not taking her eyes off me for a second. "Who is this?"